by John Burton

October 21, 2014

More than half the people in the world live on less than $2 a day. That’s incredible (and well… a little depressing) when you think about it. Many of us, this blogger included, will stand in line to cough up five bucks for a grande pumpkin- spice latte at Starbucks. Yet, the price of that oh-so-yummy coffee could feed a hungry family for a day. And those $700 Jimmy Choo strap wedge sandals that caught your eye at Nordstroms? Those shiny patent-leather beauties could feed a person for an entire year. (That’s a figure of speech of course; patent leather isn’t particularly palatable or nutritious.)

But hey, I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty. OK, well maybe just a little. It is pretty crazy when you think about it. Most of us reading this blog live in countries where we need high-powered garbage disposals in our sinks to deal with the excess food we throw away after meals. And we have so much clean drinkable water that we flush hundreds of gallons of it down our toilets each day. Meanwhile, in other countries children walk miles to the local watering well to bring back a bucket of drinkable water. Again, pretty crazy.

But I’ll stop there, before I lose you. Don’t close your browser and start reading your work email. I just wanted to set the stage and introduce you to an amazing brand that you might not be familiar with. The brand in question doesn’t make ridiculously great tasting coffee and muffins. And they won’t offer you a complimentary glass of bubbly or a cold Stella Artois while you try on designer shoes. But they do make the world a better place. And that’s something.

My #BRANDLOVE Story

Direct Relief International is a company who I have been involved with for a number of years… Though technically I’m not actually considered a “customer.” Let me explain. Direct Relief a non-profit organization whose goal is to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty, disaster, and civil unrest. Originally founded in 1948, with 57 employees worldwide today, Direct Relief has provided 1.5 Billion dollars in aid since 2000 to people in over 72 different countries.

Direct Relief manages and coordinates a partner network of over 130 companies who donate pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and medical equipment to communities in need. Donor companies are able to log on to the portal and donate excess medicines and supplies that they aren’t able to sell. Healthcare providers in the affected communities are then able to log into the Direct Relief network to view inventory and order needed supplies.

This ensures, for example, that a hurricane-stricken community who desperately needs clean drinking water will receive crates of much-needed bottled water rather than e.g., boxes of teddy bears. (Nothing against teddy bears; the author of this blog has a soft brown one named Mr. Snuggles).

The companies who donate the supplies are also able to view and track the location of their donations to ensure that the supplies are reaching the intended destination and helping people in need, and not just languishing in a warehouse or on a dock somewhere. This type of transparency gives peace of mind to the donors and helps foster repeat donations.

Finally, the online portal allows medical professionals to volunteer their time to worthwhile causes. The online system matches medical professional with volunteer opportunities in communities that could benefit from their services. For example, a rich Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon who has made a small fortune injecting wealthy Southern Californians with Botox might feel unfulfilled in his daily work and want to spend a week or two helping vaccinate children against Hepatitis in Nepal.

Sure, there’s something comforting about a hot coffee, a warm muffin, and a luxurious pair of designer shoes (even if the hot coffee sometimes scalds your mouth and the shoes leave your heels with blisters). But there’s also something comforting about knowing that you are helping make the world a better place and impacting the lives of people who you may never meet – but whose gratitude you can feel, even thousands of miles away across deserts, oceans, and mountains.

This blog is part of a series of #BRANDLOVE stories including Decathlon, Adidas, and Costco that will be featured on The Customer Edge. Send some brand love to your favorite business by sharing your positive customer experiences on Twitter or take a selfie with your favorite brand and post to Instagram- don’t forget to tag #BRANDLOVE!

April 10, 2014

Many companies have introduced mobile smart phone apps. But does this really make sense? Just as no one wants to carry around a wallet full of loyalty cards, most people are reluctant to bog down their phones with dozens of apps from retailers. Simply because I shop at a particular grocery store or gas station doesn’t mean I want to install their mobile app. And I definitely don’t want to give their app access to the contents of my phone’s SD card, my family vacation photos, or my Facebook friends list.

Certainly, I might install a generic app like GasBuddy that allows me find the lowest priced local station, but I am not likely to install a company-specific app like Shell Motorist App so I can “get more out of driving” (whatever that means) or so Shell can provide me with “the latest information on Shell products.” I’m not singling out Shell, but seriously? Come on guys!

Similarly, while I might potentially download a grocery shopping app like Grocery IQ that lets me make weekly shopping lists and includes a bar-code scanner to check prices, I am not likely to be interested in installing a bunch of individual retailer-specific apps from Walmart, Target, Safeway, Albertson, Kroger, Whole Foods, and so on.

On the other hand, there are some companies with whom I do business fairly regularly and where, due to the nature of the interactions, I might well choose to install an app. For example, I often travel for work and embarrassingly go out of my way to book my flights on United or one of their Star Alliance partners. (Side note: It’s not because of United’s customer service that I travel with them. Their customer service is deficient, when they even attempt to provide any at all. Rather, I am a begrudging hostage in their reward miles loyalty program). On the many occasions when my United flights are delayed or canceled, I use their app to rebook myself on another slightly less-delayed flight.

So should companies offer their own apps, or more pertinently, should companies expect customers to embrace their mobile apps? Like most good questions, the answer is probably “it depends.” But also probably, as a rule of thumb, the short response is “no.” The best candidates for mobile apps are companies with whom customers interact frequently, and with whom the relationship would otherwise necessitate visiting the company’s website.

I shop for groceries on a weekly basis (or sometimes daily, depending on how hungry I am). However, I have never visited any supermarket’s web site. So clearly, I have no need for an app. On the other hand, I shop online at Amazon frequently (several times a month, at least) and of course, I need to visit their website to do so. In this case, a mobile app makes perfect sense. That way, for example, I can order new shoes when I am bored, walking around the airport waiting for my delayed United flight.

Ultimately, the decision to provide a mobile app should be based on customer demand for it, not on the Marketing department’s prerogative.

April 04, 2014

First dates are supposed to be fun and casual – an opportunity to ask insightful (but not overly personal or intrusive) questions to get to know each other. At the end of the date, each person should leave feeling excited, wanting to know more about the other, and eager for a second date.

First dates are certainly not the time to try and impress someone with a detailed knowledge and analysis of every aspect of their life. “I noticed on Google that you previously lived at 555 Bernardo Ave in Mountain View. I bet you spent a lot of time at Yoga studio across the street. By the way, I really liked those photos of you doing bikram yoga that I saw on your Picasa page.” Whoa, easy there stalker!

Big data – and the accompanying predictive analytics – can certainly have their place in customer service. For example, segmenting customers by purchase history and location and merging that data with known service outages could allow a Telco or utilities company to “predict” with a reasonable degree of certainty that the customer calling in from the Cambrian Park section of San Jose, California is probably calling about a high-speed Internet and TV outage (which the company is currently working to restore) and not, for example, about their cell phone service.

In this case, time could be saved by automatically routing that customer to the appropriate service team, or perhaps by first playing an automated message informing the customer about the status of the outage and the ETA for the repair. Or even better yet, the company could proactively send out a text message to its Internet subscribers in the affected area informing them of the outage and the ETA for the repair.

Technically, the Telco provider could take even take things a step further. Using big data it could analyze patterns of usage and detect for example that a specific customer in the affected outage area doesn’t usually consume any bandwidth during weekday mornings and afternoons (presumably she is at work), but that she typically logs on to the Internet in the evenings when she gets home. The Telco provide could then proactively send an SMS message to her phone saying, “We are currently experiencing an Internet/TV outage in your home area. But don’t worry; we anticipate having it repaired before 6:15 pm when you usually get home. So you should still be able to watch ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ on Hulu tonight as usual.”

Certainly the Telco provider could implement such an initiative by leveraging big data, but that would be a bit too intrusive for most customers. The goal is to use big data to better understand customer needs, and when possible to anticipate and address those needs proactively. However, there’s a line between being helpful and being creepy. And it’s best not to step over it.

March 27, 2014

According to many CRM analysts and pundits, social media and gamification were going to revolutionize customer service. Five years ago, when the “United Breaks Guitars” song went viral, it certainly scared many C-level executives into joining Facebook and Twitter.

Similarly, I recall one highly-respected industry analyst warning companies that they needed to implement virtual help desks in the video game Second Life, or else risk slipping into obsolescence. Today I don’t know anyone who even uses Second Life, much less someone who would expect to be able to chat with their credit union while wandering around Second Life dressed as a flying penguin.

The social media hype and hysteria is finally settling, and companies are re-evaluating what role social media and gamification should play in their customer service operations. Today many companies at least have a presence on social media and a marketing/public relations team assigned to monitor Twitter and Facebook posts. But most still don’t have dedicated customer service agents assigned directly to social media channels. And no company – at least that I am aware of – has yet to set up virtual customer service desks inside Plants versus Zombies or Minecraft.

Let’s be honest, you or I might turn to Twitter to chastise a company when they disappoint us. But we realize that we still need to pick up the phone and call the help desk if we have a complicated issue. No customer in their right mind would expect a Twitter agent to be able to help them troubleshoot a tricky issue with their smart phone, printer, or computer over a series of 140 character tweets. Similarly no one is going to try and use Pinterest or Tumblr to add a new phone line to their family share plan or to switch their electric service to a new residence.

So what applicability does social media have for companies? Well, social media services provide a supplemental way for companies to stay engaged with their customers and reinforce the company’s brand. That’s why – perhaps quite obviously – Marketing departments were the first to rush into social media. But of course, customers aren’t going to just sit quietly while being assaulted with marketing messages. In exchange, customers expect to be able to reach out to companies via social media with questions, concerns, and suggestions.

The trick then for companies is to integrate social media channels with their existing contact center operations, so that customers can be seamlessly transferred from one channel (e.g. twitter) to another more practical channel such as telephone, email, or Web chat when necessary.

Customers who reach out on social media for complex service issues should be politely, but firmly, redirected to a more appropriate channel when necessary. And of course, rather than asking the customer to begin from scratch re-explaining their issue, the previous conversation and relevant information from the social media channel should be automatically transferred to the customer service agent.

March 19, 2014

Unlike some industry analysts, I don’t think the future customer service involves autonomous robots answering phones in call centers in outer space, or genetically engineered clones that don’t sleep or eat (and don’t spend half their day checking Facebook or playing Candy Crush). No, the future of customer service will be less about robots, clones and drones and more about old-fashioned eye-contact, warm smiles, and firm handshakes.

Sure, trends like Cloud/SaaS, mobile, social media, big data, and real-time predictive analytics have driven – and will continue to drive – IT investments in 2014 and beyond. But providing good customer service involves more than just adopting the latest technologies and trends. Great customer service is about making customers feel special and, when necessary, promptly resolving their issues with a warm smile and a sincere apology.

Technology is important, but technology doesn’t matter. Customers don’t particularly care whether a company’s call center is deployed in a cloud, on the moon or in someone’s basement. However, customers do care whether companies are able to resolve issues on the first call, in a professional and friendly manner. When something goes wrong with a product or service, customers expect answers. And ideally, customers want those answers to be quick, correct and hassle-free.

Today’s customers are savvy and self-reliant. Many customers will first attempt to resolve issues on their own – whether via an Internet search, a social media forum, or the company’s self-service page. Yet, when a customer isn’t able to resolve an issue and reaches out to the company, the customer expects more than just a lame IVR recording that directs them back to the company’s web site; or even worse, a second-rate first-tier agent who is sufficiently friendly and polite, but who is only able to offer the most basic suggestions that could easily be found by any ten year old with an iPad.

“Have you tried pressing the reset button,” is likely to be answered with, “Yes of course I’ve tried pressing the !@#$ reset button… fifteen times”. Customers expect more and they deserve better.

Customers expect contact center agents to be knowledgeable, helpful, and empowered to resolve complex issues. Today’s customers have no tolerance for service reps that don’t have insight into the customer’s products, history and preferences, or who ask the customer to repeat information that is – or should already be – in the CRM system. Similarly, customers expect a company’s mobile app or web site to provide personalized context-relevant solutions and recommendations, and not just a generic list of “top 10 frequently asked questions”.

While keeping up to date with technology is certainly necessary, it isn’t enough. Deploying technology is just table stakes. Leveraging that technology to allow the customer-service department to anticipate and serve customer needs is going all in. Simply stated, the future of customer service will rely more on common sense, empathy, and human decision making and less on algorithms and machine-to-machine messaging protocols.

February 18, 2014

Most of my friends and work acquaintances consider me to be a “jock”. I however prefer to think of myself more as a "sportsman", "outdoorsman", or "endurance athlete". Sure, it is true that I can hop out of bed (even with a hangover) and run 100 miles through the mountains without breaking a sweat.

But I didn't always have these abs of steel and bulging muscles. In fact, in school I was the quintessential geek. Back in high school, while the cool kids are drove to the mall for our hour-long lunch break, I skipped lunch and wrote computer programs in Basic on the school’s computer (I think it was from Radio Shack). A few years later, in college, those same popular kids spent their evenings doing vodka shots and passing in the front lawn at frat parties at 2:00 am, while I was holed up in the University computer lab typing commands in VAX/VMS.

This was pre-Windows, pre-Internet (at least as we know it now) and pre-Facebook. Yet, I uncovered something that would forever change my life and introduce me to the strange and exciting new world of online dating. Somehow during my late-night sessions of computer geeking, I stumbled upon the fact that it was possible to ping the server for a list of other logged on users and to communicate with these other users via a rudimentary and cryptic messaging protocol. That’s how I met my first girlfriend. Let’s call her Missy – well because that was her name actually.

We hit it off online, eventually met and then dated for a while IRL (in real-life). It was a victory for geeks everywhere. Or at least a victory for geeks named John who lived on the University of Michigan’s North Campus – a secluded “special campus” -- for engineers, math students, computer scientists, classical musicians and other assorted nerds -- located deep within a forest on the outskirts of town and only accessible via a lengthy bus ride from main campus, as if to quarantine and protect the rest of the campus from kids with overly high IQs and underdeveloped social skills.

That was 1995, and online dating (like the Internet itself) was still in its infancy, if it even existed at all. Today, over twenty-some years later, there’s no shortage of online dating Web sites and mobile applications. Anyone who has watched any late-night television has probably seen ads for sites like Match.com, eHarmony, or OKCupid that promise to help you find your soul mate based on your answers to a survey or personality test.

And then there’s a whole slew of more specialized sites such as DatingforParents (for single parents) , BeautifulPeople (for people who are attractive and know it), Adam4Adam (for gay singles), OurTime (for singles over 50), JDate or Christian Mingle (for Christian singles) or even Farmers Only (for “good ol' country folk”). And surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly) there are even sites like AshleyMadison and NoStringsAttached for married people looking to do a little dating on the side. Oh my!

Many parallels can be drawn between the rapid advancement of online dating and the software industry itself, as well as the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space specifically. Both began with humble beginnings and clunky interfaces that only a computer programmer (or other sufficiently tech-savvy Geek) could understand. And both slowly evolved, adding more features and functionality. Both eventually recognized the need for personalization as well as user-friend user interfaces. And, not surprisingly, in today’s era of smart phones and tablets, both now offer mobile apps that incorporate location-based services!

The device-security firm Lovation says 39% of online dating now happens through mobile apps. And, as with CRM scenarios, it’s all about location, location, location! Just as location-based CRM apps can be used, for example, to optimize the routes of service technicians based on their current location, so can online dating apps be used to help a hapless love-seeker to find a near-by soulmate just looking for love in the bar or coffee shop across the street!

Location-based dating apps like Tinder and Grinder are all the rage. Tinder was recently in the news when several winter Olympic athletes confessed that they had to uninstall the app because it was interfering with their Olympic preparation and training. And at last year’s summer Olympics, so many athletes logged on at once that the Grinder server crashed, disappointing a lot of lonely would-be medalists (I bet their coaches were happy though).

I guess the moral of the story here is that, whether you are looking for love, looking for archived purchase orders, or looking for the nearest HVAC unit in need of repair… it’s going to be a lot easier and lot more efficient if you are leveraging the latest software applications and location-based services than if you are sitting in the back of a dark computer lab in the middle of the night randomly pinging the server hoping for an answer. Click here to learn more about SAP’s new powerful suite of mobile CRM apps called Fiori that can make your life easier... and leave you with more time to look for love. ♥ ♥ ♥

January 24, 2014

It's winter time again! For those of you living in the Midwest, East Coast, Central or Mountain regions (or any place except California or Florida), that probably means cold weather and snow... and possibly lots of it. Note: Not to make you jealous or anything, but it was sunny and 70 degrees again here today at SAP's office in Palo Alto, California. Ah, but I digress.

For those of us who like football, winter also means that it's time for the Super Bowl -- a glorious event where friends and neighbors get together to consume calorie dense food and fermented beverages while watching grown men run around in spandex costumes. It's a bit like Cirque du Solei or Lord of the Dance. But not really. Oh yes, and there's the commercials. Millions and millions of dollars worth of commercials.

But for the rest of us who don't particularly appreciate American football or follow other sports like golf, tennis, soccer, cycling, cricket, or even synchronized diving... winter mainly means that flu season is upon us. And almost nothing is worse than coming down with the flu. Except perhaps coming down with the flu on the weekend of your SAP CRM upgrade go-live!

But if you are lucky enough to survive the snow, the Super Bowl and the flu, then you should probably reward yourself with a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for the SAP Insider CRM 2014 conference! I attend this conference every year, and I always find it valuable and useful. For customers, you get a chance to learn about what's new in the world of SAP CRM and to network and share best practices and tips and tricks with other customers.

For SAP employees like myself, it's a great opportunity to meet with customers! Whether you have just gone live, or are still struggling with your upgrade or implementation, I am always happy to sit down with you and listen. Preferably with a beer.

If you haven't attended an SAP Insider event before -- and certainly also if you have -- I urge you to sign up and join us. As usual, this year I will again be presenting my annual three-hour pre-conference session on the SAP CRM Interaction Center. This session will walk you through all the main features and functions of the Interaction Center including CTI integration, E-Mail Response Management System (ERM), help desk, and more.

We'll also look at some exciting new enhancements available in the most recent enhancement packages for SAP CRM 7.0, including things like the Twitter integration, Agent Inbox enhancements, and the new Work Distribution Dashboard for managers.

December 16, 2013

It’s no secret that many of us struggle with our weight, fitness, and health – especially during the holidays. Part of the issue, particularly for business folks who work at a desk in an office, is that well… we work at desk, in an office.

Generations ago many of us had jobs that involved strenuous physical labor and hours of walking around on our feet. Farming, mining, manufacturing, construction, or maintenance will get you fit faster than any gym membership! But today, with the exceptions of postal letter carriers and Zumba instructors, most of us aren’t getting much exercise during the workday (unless you consider banging on your keyboard and cursing your computer as exercise).

And let’s not get started on the temptation of holiday food – all that stuffing and mashed potatoes, cookies and pumpkin pie. Oh my! And when it’s already dark and cold by the time we leave the office, who can blame us for skipping the gym and head straight home to hibernate. It’s no wonder that we put on a few extra holiday pounds.

Then predictably, each January, we flock to health clubs like salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Nobody really knows how or why or we do it. Perhaps it’s just something programmed into our DNA. But every year we make the same new year’s resolution that this is going to be the year we get fit and dramatically change our life. We strap on the sweat bands, knee braces, and heart rate monitors. And then we hit the gym running. It’s fast, its furious. There’s sweat flying everywhere. And then around February it all fizzles out.

The same thing happens in the business world with customer service departments. Each year companies read the annual reports where their industry – or worse yet their actual company – is prominently featured in a “Top 10 Worst Customer Service of 2013” list. The company promises that this is going to be the year that they revamp their cludgy self-service website, fully empower their hapless contact center agents, and re-energize their disgruntled front-line employees.

The CEO summons his troops. The line of business managers scramble into action. Customer surveys are furiously fired off. Feedback is collected, collated, clustered, calibrated, and cross-examined. But by then it’s late February and everyone’s attention has shifted to the lagging Q1 pipeline. It’s back to business as normal.

Here’s the problem with new year’s resolutions. They are usually made under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol. After a dozen champagne toasts nothing seems impossible! Sure, you can sculpt your abs like Channing Tatum or Alessandra Ambrosio by summertime. Of course you can totally revamp you customer service department overnight. But then the hangover and reality set in.

With unrealistic overly-aggressive new year’s resolutions like this, we would be just as well off resolving to eat more chocolate, drink more wine, and sleep in longer. We might not end up with chiseled abs or a best-in-class Net Promoter score, but at least we would be happier. Besides chocolate and wine are both packed with anti-oxidants and studies have shown that getting more sleep improves everything from brain function to libido!

You’ve probably seen the WestJet Christmas Miracle video that went viral on YouTube and Facebook last week featuring a flight of passengers who got to talk with Santa at a kiosk in the boarding area before their flight and were surprised with wrapped packages in the baggage claim area when they landed. It’s a great publicity stunt. But it’s not a business model. With airlines charging these days for everything from checked baggage to pillows and blankets, no one’s going to stay in business by giving away flat screen TVs to all their passengers.

A better and more realistic approach is to pick one or two manageable but critical goals to focus our efforts on. For example, maybe cutting out soda and candy, and eating more raw fruits and vegetables. Or, on the business side, replacing that old outdated ACD/PBX in the contact center with a new state of the art IP-communications system (like SAP Business Communications Management) that lets contact center agents collaborate in real-time with anyone across the customer service organization, from reps in the field to knowledge workers in the back office.

New year’s resolutions don’t have to be grandiose. But they should be meaningful, and of course achievable.

April 26, 2013

Everyone hates spam. And I admit it; I’m part of the problem. No, I don’t control a vast army of evil spam-bots who do my bidding, filling people’s email inboxes with unsolicited email offers to save 50% on Viagra or Rolex Watches. I’m just a tiny cog in the giant well-oiled machine called Email Marketing.

But, as a business software insider who has co-written numerous technical articles on topics like, “Expand the Content of Outbound Email Campaigns” and “Your Mass Emails Can Also be Personal if You Use Marketing Attributes”, I do feel somewhat responsible for the misguided usage of email marketing. And I’d like to make amends.

Here’s the truth about even the most carefully crafted targeted email marketing campaigns: they suck. Look, just because you once bought a product from me, doesn’t mean you now want to receive weekly/daily/hourly email offers from me. High-frequency communications, no matter how nicely formatted or personalized, aren’t going to lure you into doing more business with me or improve our “relationship”. If you get two unsolicited emails from me in the same week, I’m pretty sure you’re going to click the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

Smart companies are realizing that rather than bombarding customers with spammy email offers, there are more effective ways of increasing repeat purchases and gaining a greater customer wallet share. Amazon.com comes to mind as a particularly good example – for a number of reasons.

Everyone is of course probably already familiar with Amazon’s intelligent product recommendation tools, such as, “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” or “Inspired by Your Browsing History” suggestions which encourage customers to buy additional items that they may have not previously considered (or even been aware of). Suggesting relevant add-ons, accessories, related products, or upsells at the time of purchase is far more effective than sending an unsolicited follow-up email a month later.

Much has also been written about the great success of Amazon’s “Prime” membership program which offers customers unlimited free shipping in exchange for a $79 a year membership fee. It’s not actually the annual fees though that are padding Amazon’s bottom line. Rather, the real success of the program is about modifying customer behavior. It has been shown that customers with Amazon Prime make more frequent purchases and spend 200% to 300% more than regular customers. Now that’s how you grow your customers!

Another interesting thing that Amazon has rolled out to increase customer purchase frequency is their “Subscribe and Save” program for selected products that people tend to buy on a regular reoccurring basis such as vitamins and supplements, health and personal care items, baby food, diapers, pet food and pet supplies, and so on. When a customer selects one of the eligible items and add it to their cart, Amazon then offers the customer a slightly lower price if they sign up to receive shipments at regular intervals. The customer can choose the frequency of the shipments, skip shipments when necessary, or even unsubscribe at any time. It’s not about locking the customer into a contract (as in the Telco industry), but rather it’s about converting one time shoppers into regular repeat customers.

When I sat down to write this blog, I didn’t intend it to become a tribute to Amazon.com. Although I have to give props where props are due. Amazon certainly does a great job of encouraging customers to buy more products – and to buy more frequently. And they do it without any spam.

I think all of us, regardless of our Industry and whether we are in business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, can probably think of ways we can apply similar strategies in our own organizations or in our own lives. As an example, let’s talk about something near and dear to my heart (or my feet as the case may be) – running shoes. My running buddies call me a “shoe whore”, though they insist it is meant as a compliment. I probably own several dozen pairs of running shoes (that may become a future blog post of its own) and I am constantly buying new ones as the old ones wear out.

As you might suspect, I get inundated with emails from running shoe stores and online sports retailers promoting their latest sales. Typically these emails are completely generic, advertising various brands and models that I have never bought and will likely never purchase. You see, I’m a bit specific about what brands, models, sizes, and colors I wear. As someone who regularly purchases Brooks Pure Grit men’s 10.5 in black, I’m not particularly interested in saving 40% off on fluorescent women’s Nike’s.

Similarly, if I just bought a new pair of racing flats last week, I’m probably not already interested in buying another replacement pair already this week. While I log a lot of miles, my shoes do generally last me longer than a week. As a fairly regular runner, I typically replace my shoes every 3 months based on the amount of mileage I run per week. Obviously a less active runner might replace their shoes less frequently, perhaps every six months. And this is a perfect case for a “subscribe and save” offer!

Clearly, companies could stand to gain a lot from moving away from generic, albeit “targeted” and “personalized” email sales offers that address the customer by name and utilize a relevant marketing attribute or two, but show no real understanding of the customer’s needs or buying behavior – and instead implement programs that let customers indicate which products they want, and at what frequency they want to buy them.

This stuff isn’t science fiction. The technology is already here. Using tools like SAP CRM and SAP Hana, you can make sense of big data on the fly to retrieve – at the moment a customer adds a product to their cart on the web site – what other products that customer has purchased in the past, what related marketing attributes might be relevant, and the typical usage patterns for similar customers. Based on that information, you can recommend a purchase frequency to the customer and a corresponding discount level. Presto!

January 21, 2013

The 1990’s were a great time – especially if you were a fan of boy bands or grunge music and flannel shirts.

All jokes aside, the 1990’s was a time of technological revolution with the advent of the Internet and mobile phones forever changing life (and business) as we know. It was during the ‘90’s that a computer – IBM’s “Deep Blue” – first defeated the reigning world (human) chess champion. And let’s not forget, it was also during the nineties that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – both as a business strategy and as a package software solution – first gained a foothold.

And finally, who among us doesn’t enjoy an occasional chuckle at embarrassing ‘90s photos of current celebrities? Fast forward a couple of decades and not everything has completely changed. Skinny jeans, flannel shirts, and day-glow Wayfarer sunglasses are all back in style. However, thankfully most artifacts of the nineties have been gracefully retired – like teased hair bangs, or wearing Lycra bike shorts with high-top basketball shoes.

Sure, we might occasionally glance back at the nineties and reminisce about how cute we looked in our Jordache jeans and oversized sweaters. And who doesn’t have a couple pair of “MC Hammer pants” hanging in the back of his closet (or is that just me?)? But if we are honest with ourselves, the technology of the nineties – much like the fashion of the nineties – was unsightly, over-sized, and cumbersome.

For example, while the Sony Walkman was a marvelous innovation, I doubt anyone really misses having to manually wind their music cassette tapes back up with a pencil after all the tape came unwound. And while at one time every street corner in every city was littered with payphone booths, I personally enjoy no longer having to walk around with pockets full or quarters and a pager/beeper to keep in touch with friends and family. And thankfully, it no longer takes us twenty minutes to load a webpage or download an email attachment using AOL and a 200 baud modem. Booting… connecting… downloading… beep, beep, beep, beep. Ah the good old days.

It seems like everything took longer in the Nineties. In that pre-Starbucks, pre-Wifi, pre-digital era, you couldn’t download an album or movie – on your phone – in a coffee-shop while the barista whips you up a soy vanilla latte like you can today. Such was the stuff of sci-fi movies. Heck, even renting a movie required a lengthy car drive to a video store (and usually culminated in several dollars worth of late-return fees). And I distinctly remember routinely having to wait on hold for several hours just to speak to a customer service agent! I’m not sure what kind of CTI software and CRM system companies were using, but I certainly don’t miss it!

However, it seems that not all organizations have embraced the latest trends in computer telephony. Many organizations, for one reason or another, are still running their contact centers using old TDM-based hardware. While hardware-based PBXs/ACDs were the de facto standard during the nineties and the first half of the following decade, such technology has quickly become antiquated. Most new CTI products and contact-center infrastructure being sold today are Internet-Protocol (IP) based software solutions. And increasingly, these software solutions are hosted in “the cloud” and delivered via software-as-a-service.

As recently as just five or ten years ago people were still debating, perhaps rightfully, whether voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) was ready yet for mainstream business usage. How stable was it? Would the industry ever standardize on a single protocol? How expensive was it to deploy? Could the company’s IT department support the bandwidth requirements? Today, these questions have all been satisfactorily answered and companies have been rolling out not just voice over IP solutions, but complete multi-channel communications systems based on IP including telephony, corporate directory and presence information, email, Web chat, internal instant messaging, and more.

SAP offers such an IP-based multi-channel communication system – SAP Business Communications Management (SAP BCM) – that is fully integrated out of the box with SAP CRM, including the Interaction Center. SAP BCM enables companies to route customer telephone calls, emails, or Web chats directly to the best-suited available agent who has the expertise, language skills, and product knowledge to help the customer and resolve their issue. Using BCM, Interaction Center agents can reach out to other experts in the organization and request assistance, or even transfer the customer (as well as the customer record and any open sales orders, service requests, etc.).

SAP BCM is available in a number of different deployment models and options. You can, of course, download and install the software locally on an in-house server. Additionally, an “express” version of the software is available from SAP as a “Rapid Deployment Solution” that is delivered and installed by SAP using best-business practices. Other options for deploying BCM include both a “BCM-in-a-Box” and “BCM-in-the-Cloud” deployment models delivered by certified SAP partners such as Covington Creative. If you are interested in using SAP BCM with the SAP CRM Interaction Center or have further questions, please feel free to contact John Burton at john.burton@sap.com.